Well, after five years, ten months, and one day, I'm back! No, seriously, it's been that long. See my sig, which I'm leaving unchanged from that era, to see what I've had in the past. Since then I've added a Toshiba DVD/Tivo combo and two series 2's, all three of which have lifetime and have been hard-drive-upgraded.

Now I've got a TivoHD, and I've just completed the internal drive upgrade, and I've got some notes. Sure is easier than when I was doing this to Series 1's! Ya got yer Windows GUI tools, yer SATA drive docks, and yer sub-$100-per-TB drives! All fancy-schmancy!

So, I bought a WD15EADS because the marginal extra cost ($20) was worth it for the added 250GB capacity. Unfortunately, I *now* see that the WD15EADS gives the soft-reboot problem, which I do, indeed, have. I suppose I can live with it, since I can't imagine the box requiring soft reboots that often. And it's a bit irritating knowing there's a quarter terabyte in there that's unused, but I can live with that, too.

WinMFS didn't perform the upgrade as smoothly as I had hoped it would. I did multiple incremental backups (i.e. right out of the box, then after GS, then after a software upgrade, then after pairing the CC, etc.), ran it for a couple weeks, and then did the upgrade to the 1.5TB drive. When doing the restore in WinMFS, it attempted to use the total remainder of the drive (1.2TB), which did not work...the TivoHD rebooted, and then reported the original capacity of the 160GB drive. The key was to perform a simple restore, *not* allow the restore function to use the rest of the drive capacity, but *then* use mfsadd to use the correct 1.0TB additional capacity.

So now it's up to 198 hours of HD, 1733 hours of SD. Sweet. Thanks for the software, spike!

I just checked again and apparently I did not partition or format it. I just verified that the OS (Win7) recognized it OK. 16 hours seems like a long time. Can you tell if it is making progress.

I did have another expander and I took the disk out altogether and it is working fine in another system.

Indeed it is making slow progress. Very sloooow progress. I haven't upgraded to Windows 7 yet but I had to remove the drive from it's enclosure in order for my Vista machine to regcognize it. The drive is attached to an external doc that is connected to my laptop via USB.

Yes, Series3 TiVo's will accept most eSATA drives via plug and play (refer to the faq for the recommended list). Be sure to connect it properly and follow the on-screen instructions. There is a warning screen that will appear stating that the drive is unapproved, do you want to proceed? Three thumbs up (IIRC) to continue and you're golden.

The drive comes with an eSATA cable and AFAIK no one has had any problems with it. You could buy the recommended SIIG Serial ATA external cable as a backup if you wanted.

I got the drive but I don't think I got an eSATA cable. The manual says that it comes with a USB and a FireWire cable and that's what I got. Can I get a good eSATA cable at Best Buy or some other local type dealer?

Installed the 1Tb Fantom Drives "GreenDrive" today. Touch wood it all went well. Though, TiVo fussed about it being an unsupported unit, the installation completed and there is 165 hours of HD storage now. I can't believe how quiet the drive is.
As has been noted before, the drive did not come with an eSata cable.

Just got in about 4 new WD10EADS Units and any of them built in August Or Sept exhibit the soft reboot problem, not sure if it has been mentioned before or not, but I noticed when I unplugged the drive from the unit after the soft reboot hang it wasnt even spun up? Im sure this is not new news but if it is, just wanted to offer my info up. So like others have stated, something is telling the tivo not to re spin up the drive after a soft boot.

Why though did it always exhibit in the S3 unit and not THD at first? wouldnt this also confirm that its partially a Tivo problem as well? Something in the OS code?

pulled the power on the TiVo HD.
Turned on the enclosure.
Connected the e-SATA cable between the TiVo and the Rosewill.
Powered on the TiVo.

The external storage menu tells me I have an unsupported device.

Is this normal? Do I actually HAVE to run the mfslive proceedures to marry the drives?

Thanks.

With the Tivo S3 unit it would work as a plug and play type situation.

BUT with the Tivo HD unit it only works as plug n play with the Tivo officially supported WD My DVR expander 500Gb or 1Tb drive units.

So Yes using your Tivo HD unit you would need to use WinMFS to marry your external esata drive to the internal unit, then should work just fine. Or you could just use your new 1Tb drive to replace the original Tivo HD drive. Maybe your preferred option since you need to open and remove the original drive anyway

With the Tivo S3 unit it would work as a plug and play type situation.

BUT with the Tivo HD unit it only works as plug n play with the Tivo officially supported WD My DVR expander 500Gb or 1Tb drive units.

So Yes using your Tivo HD unit you would need to use WinMFS to marry your external esata drive to the internal unit, then should work just fine. Or you could just use your new 1Tb drive to replace the original Tivo HD drive. Maybe your preferred option since you need to open and remove the original drive anyway

Thanks for the response. This was my fear going into it .... my problem is I don't have a desktop. All my home computing is done on laptops, so ... ugh.

Or you could just use your new 1Tb drive to replace the original Tivo HD drive. Maybe your preferred option since you need to open and remove the original drive anyway

Quote:

Originally Posted by Joe3

I did it on old HP Tablet.

Go back and study this thread.

Sound advice on both counts. Use winMFS and your original TiVo drive to image your new drive and replace the miniscule internal drive in your TiVo HD. Put the original on the shelf as a backup. You can use a laptop. Everything you need to know is in the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ.

I got the drive but I don't think I got an eSATA cable. The manual says that it comes with a USB and a FireWire cable and that's what I got. Can I get a good eSATA cable at Best Buy or some other local type dealer?

Apologies for misleading you regarding the SATA cable.

Did you actually receive a Fantom enclosure that has USB/Firewire/eSATA connectors? The drive listed only offered USB/eSATA. The enclosure w/Firewire usually costs another $30 or more. If so I wish I would have ordered one at the time for my Mac!

In any case, enjoy!

BTW, I just checked the MacMall and OnSale web sites and both are down for "maintenance". Leads me to believe that they are indeed the same company...or at least share the same server. Coincidence? I don't think so.

I would highly recommend the Kobalt 8-in-1 Precision Torx Head Screwdriver from Lowes. It comes with both #10 and #15 tips, and works perfectly on the hard to reach hard drive screws. And it is only $5.98. Only drawback is that it is not magnetic.

I bought a WD10EADS 1TB drive and a Calvary Dual HDD Dock. When I put either the original TiVoHD drive or the new HDD in the dock, it will be seen in WinMFS, but when they're both in, nothing appears in WinMFS.

Are the switches in the correct position on the drive? I don't have mine in front of me, but that dock can be set up to either show individual drives or a single drive spanned across two physical drives. Check the sticker.

By the way, I tried to do the same thing, but since it wasn't obvious how to do it, I just said 'forget it'.

It's set up for JBOD (or Just a bunch of disks). Doesn't matter which slot I use for either drive.I finally just gave up and cannibalized my optical drive's sata connection, which finally got it to work.

I called Calvarty and the tech support guy said that sometimes the drive spanning on the docks just doesn't work, so I guess mine is getting returned.

I'm using a macbook pro ... i broke down and put an XP bootcamp partition on it for this upgrade.

Quote:

Originally Posted by richsadams

Sound advice on both counts. Use winMFS and your original TiVo drive to image your new drive and replace the miniscule internal drive in your TiVo HD. Put the original on the shelf as a backup. You can use a laptop. Everything you need to know is in the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ.

I started the process tonight, but I had to terminate it due to time constraints. It had been sitting there running for about 1hr 7 minutes when I terminated it ... but it was at sitting at the marker "Estimated time to complete: 7:03 minutes" for about 20 minutes. Is this a normal type of situation and how long is a reasonable time to give it before I quit the mfscopy procedure?

I was hoping to take over the 2 shows (about 2 hours of HD) that are left on the TiVo, but I guess I can do without them and use the backup/restore method if I must.

I'm using a macbook pro ... i broke down and put an XP bootcamp partition on it for this upgrade. I started the process tonight, but I had to terminate it due to time constraints. It had been sitting there running for about 1hr 7 minutes when I terminated it ... but it was at sitting at the marker "Estimated time to complete: 7:03 minutes" for about 20 minutes. Is this a normal type of situation and how long is a reasonable time to give it before I quit the mfscopy procedure?

I was hoping to take over the 2 shows (about 2 hours of HD) that are left on the TiVo, but I guess I can do without them and use the backup/restore method if I must.

Again, your advise is appreciated.

Time to transfer between drives depends on two things: the amount of data being transferred and the transfer rate. Some HD recordings are very big, some are more compressed. USB has a very slow transfer rate by comparison to SATA, etc.

It's normal for the system appear idle. (IIRC there's some reference to that in the first post.) If you have a program to verify activity it will show that work is being done in the background. That's not to say that it might not have frozen for some reason, but reports of things appearing to be static are very common.

I've never used a virtual machine to create an upgraded drive so I've no idea how long it would take to transfer a couple of HD recordings. Seven hours seems like a long time, but between the slow data transfer rate, any conversion process (if there are any) or whatever it's possible. Perhaps someone else can chime in on that.

Time to transfer between drives depends on two things: the amount of data being transferred and the transfer rate. Some HD recordings are very big, some are more compressed. USB has a very slow transfer rate by comparison to SATA, etc.

It's normal for the system appear idle. (IIRC there's some reference to that in the first post.) If you have a program to verify activity it will show that work is being done in the background. That's not to say that it might not have frozen for some reason, but reports of things appearing to be static are very common.

I've never used a virtual machine to create an upgraded drive so I've no idea how long it would take to transfer a couple of HD recordings. Seven hours seems like a long time, but between the slow data transfer rate, any conversion process (if there are any) or whatever it's possible. Perhaps someone else can chime in on that.

Truncated backup/restore is going to be much quicker of course.

Happy upgrading!

Very strange. I started the process again this morning and it only took 32 minutes to complete.

I did change some power settings in XP tho to leave all hard disks on forever and to never sleep.

Yes, Series3 TiVo's will accept most eSATA drives via plug and play (refer to the faq for the recommended list). Be sure to connect it properly and follow the on-screen instructions. There is a warning screen that will appear stating that the drive is unapproved, do you want to proceed? Three thumbs up (IIRC) to continue and you're golden.

The drive comes with an eSATA cable and AFAIK no one has had any problems with it. You could buy the recommended SIIG Serial ATA external cable as a backup if you wanted.

Hi Rich,

I got the drive from tiger direct. It was sold out at the other places.
I ordered a cable got the drive working (179 Hrs HD!) with my tivo but it is a Noisy drive! It sounds like somebody practicing morse code. clickity clickity. Is there much difference in the noise levels on these drives?

Time to transfer between drives depends on two things: the amount of data being transferred and the transfer rate. Some HD recordings are very big, some are more compressed. USB has a very slow transfer rate by comparison to SATA, etc.

It's normal for the system appear idle. (IIRC there's some reference to that in the first post.) If you have a program to verify activity it will show that work is being done in the background. That's not to say that it might not have frozen for some reason, but reports of things appearing to be static are very common.

I've never used a virtual machine to create an upgraded drive so I've no idea how long it would take to transfer a couple of HD recordings. Seven hours seems like a long time, but between the slow data transfer rate, any conversion process (if there are any) or whatever it's possible. Perhaps someone else can chime in on that.

Truncated backup/restore is going to be much quicker of course.

Happy upgrading!

One other thing I do to make it a lot faster is to delete the recordings that were in the erased listing...they are still there so when you say there are 2 HD shows, I bet there are a whole lot more!

I got the drive from tiger direct. It was sold out at the other places.
I ordered a cable got the drive working (179 Hrs HD!) with my tivo but it is a Noisy drive! It sounds like somebody practicing morse code. clickity clickity. Is there much difference in the noise levels on these drives?

bruce

What you're hearing is head seek movement. Drive activity noise varies...it depends on the AAM (auto acoustic management) level set by the manufacturer. That controls the seek speed. High seek levels cause more noise than lower/slower seek levels. TiVo doesn't benefit from high seek levels. Most A/V drives are set to low seek levels and along with other features are usually very quiet.

I'm a little surprised as Fantom has been using the WD GP hard drives in their "Green" series which is one of the quietest they make. Earlier users posted that the Fantom drives they have were quiet. I wonder if they've switched to something else? If you have a moment can you post the drive model number? TiVo Central > Messages and Settings > Account & System Information > System Information. Scroll down to the second screen and you should see a drive number next to the "External Storage" line.

The AAM setting on most drives (Seagate being the exception) can be changed/lowered (from 258 or so to 124) by running a program called the Hitachi Feature Tool. It's a very simple procedure however it usually involves connecting the hard drive directly to a PC (SATA connection on the MB) so I'm not sure if it will work with a drive inside an enclosure. I don't know why it wouldn't but I've never tried using it that way. Perhaps someone can chime in? MPSAN?

It's also possible that there is something wrong with the drive, but until we get the drive model number we won't be able to check the specs to see if it's supposed to be quieter or not.

Glad to hear that you have a lot of new real estate...but the noise issue is troubling.

Last edited by richsadams; 12-06-2009 at 01:49 AM.
Reason: Tyop...d'oh!

One other thing I do to make it a lot faster is to delete the recordings that were in the erased listing...they are still there so when you say there are 2 HD shows, I bet there are a whole lot more!

Good point! I always forget that. There probably should be a recommendation in the Drive Expansion and Drive Upgrade FAQ suggesting that if you don't think you'll need any of your deleted recordings to permanently delete everything in your Recently Deleted folder before upgrading.

The AAM setting on most drives (Seagate being the exception) can be changed/lowered (from 254 or so to 128) by running a program called the Hitachi Feature Tool. It's a very simple procedure however it usually involves connecting the hard drive directly to a PC (SATA connection on the MB) so I'm not sure if it will work with a drive inside an enclosure. I don't know why it wouldn't but I've never tried using it that way. Perhaps someone can chime in? MPSAN?

Before finally giving up and opening up my PC, I was able to change the AAM setting on my WD10EADS while it was in my (apparently faulty) USB dual drive dock.

Rich, I have always connected the drives to SATA ports on a MoBo with an ICH10R so I have not tried a USB converter to run it. I do know that the WD diags liked the SATA and did not like the USB converter I tried on my other system. I am not sure just what tool I used and am not sure it was the Hitachi tool. I would have to look the next time the other system is on.